
WHAT 
PATRIOTISM DEMANDS 



M HMERICSN CATHOLIC'S VIEW 



By J. 1^. SPALDING 

Bishop of Peoria 



REPRINTED BY PERMISSION FROM BISHOP SPALDING'S 
NEW BOOK, ENTITLED 'OPPORTUNITY," PUBLISHED Z 
BY A. C. McCLURG & CO., CHICAGO. 



■Syo 
WHAT PATRIOTISM DEMANDS 



M SMERICSN CSTHOLIC'S VIEW. 



By J Iv. SPALDING, 

Bishop of Peoria. 



We have sympathized with all oppressed peo- 
ples — with Ireland, Greece, Armenia, Cuba. To 
emancipate the slave we gladly sacrificed the lives 
of hundreds of thousands of our soldiers. And 
now the American soldier, who should never 
shoulder a gun except in a righteous cause, is 
sent ten thousand miles across the ocean to shoot 
men whose real crime is that they wish to be free, 
wish to govern themselves. To say that they are 
unfit for freedom is to put forth the plea of the 
tyrant in all ages and everywhere. The enem.ies 
of liberty have never lacked for pretexts to justify 
their wrongs ; but, in truth, at the root of all wars 
of conquest there lies lust for blood or for gold. 

If the inhabitants of the Philippines came glad- 
ly to throw themselves into our arms, we should 
refuse to do more than counsel, guide, and pro- 
tect them until they form themselves into a stable 
and independent government. What, then, is to 
be thought of those who seem resolved either to 

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rule or exterminate them, believing probably that 
the only good Filipino is a dead Filipino ? 

The argument that our policy has from the be- 
ginning been one of expansion has no application 
in the present crisis. By the treaty of 1783 the 
Mississippi river was recognized as the western 
boundary of the United States; but when in 1802 
the Spanish civil officers, whom France, having 
recovered Louisiana, left in command, issued a 
proclamation closing the Mississippi to American 
commerce, it at once became manifest that we 
could not leave the mouth of the great river which 
flowed for more than a thousand miles through 
our territory, in the possession of a foreign power. 
Thomas Jefferson, therefore, acted in the spirit of 
a patriot and a statesman, when, taking advantage 
of the embarrassments of Bonaparte, he purchased 
the whole region lying west of the Mississippi 
and not already occupied by Spain. Here was a 
natural development, the gaining possession of 
vast tracts of unsettled lands which, if not peopled 
by American citizens would become the home of 
a powerful rival state, and this would involve 
wars, standing armies and the jeopardy of free 
institutions. Similar reasons justified the pur- 
chase of Florida in 1819. When, in 1845, we an- 
nexed the republic of Texas, we did what the. 
Texans themselves wished us to do. Disputes 
concerning the western boundary of Texas led to 
the war with Mexico, which, at the close of the 



war sold to the United States New Mexico and 
Upper California, including Nevada and Utah, 
most of Arizona, and parts of Colorado. These 
countries were scarcely inhabited. Upper Cali- 
fornia containing not more than fifteen thousand 
people. In this whole course of expansion we fol- 
lowed the line of natural development. We en- 
tered upon the possession of waste regions which 
were geographically part of our country, and 
which we were certain to fill with populations sim- 
ilar to those occupying the states already founded. 
To carry out this work there could be no need of 
a standing army or a powerful navy; none of 
making war to conquer and hold in subjection 
races which, being altogether unlike ourselves, 
claimed the right, in the establishment of a gov- 
ernment, to be guided by their own ideas and tra- 
ditions. In purchasing these territories, it may 
be said that we bought land and not human be- 
ings — land that was part of our inheritance. But 
now, following the lead of our great capitalists 
and trustlords, we buy at one stroke ten million 
human beings ; beings who live in another hemi- 
sphere, who differ from us in every way, who 
dwell in a climate which is fatal to the white man, 
who can be of no advantage whatever to us, but 
who, if we persist in holding them, will involve 
us in the most serious difficulties and dangers. A 
war of conquest is in contradiction with our 
fundamental principles of government; it is op- 



posed to all our traditions. The thought of ruling 
over subject peoples is repugnant to our deepest 
and noblest sentiments. It is part of our good 
fortune, of our providential position and mission 
in the world, that our country is vast enough and 
self-sufficient enough to make all desire for con- 
quest an unholy and meaningless temptation. We 
have room for three or four hundred millions of 
human beings. If more are required, and we are 
true to ourselves, British America will come to us 
without there being need of firing a gun. 

We have money enough already, and our wealth 
is increasing rapidly. What we have to learn is 
how to live, how to distribute our money, how to 
take from it its mastery over us and make it our 
servant. 

Commercial and manufacturing competition is 
becoming a struggle for existence fiercer than 
that which makes Nature red with ravin in tooth 
and claw. Whereas the tendency of true civiliza- 
tion and religion is to convert the struggle for life 
into co-operation for life, into work of all for all, 
that all may have those inner goods which make 
men wise, holy, beautiful, and strong; — whereas, 
this is the tendency of right civilization, our greed, 
our superstitious belief in money as the only true 
God and Saviour of man, hurries us on with in- 
creasing speed into all the venahties, dishonesties, 
and corruptions, into all the tricks and trusts by 
which the people are disheartened and impover- 



ished. We are hypnotized by the glitter and glare, 
the pomp and circumstance of wealth, and are be- 
coming incapable of a rational view of life. We 
have lost taste for simple things and simple ways. 
We flee from the country as from a desert, and 
find self-forgetfulness only amid the noise and 
rush of great cities, where high thought and pure 
affection are well nigh impossible. How far we 
have drifted from that race of farmers who threw 
off the yoke of England and built the noble state ; 
who believed that honor was better than money, 
freedom than luxury and display! Their plain 
democratic Republic is no longer good enough for 
us. We are become imperial. We must have 
mighty armies, and navies which shall encircle 
the earth, to bring into subjection weak and un- 
protected savages and barbarians. Why? For 
glory? No. That is a standpoint we have left 
behind. For humanity? Wholesale murder is 
not humanity. Why ? For money, more money, 
money without end. 

We are the victims of commercialism ; we have 
caught the contagion of the insanity that the rich- 
est nations are the worthiest and most enduring. 
We have lost sight of the eternal principles that 
all freedom is enrooted in moral freedom, that 
riches are akin to fear and death, that by the soul 
only can a nation be great. 

If we but have the courage to look steadfastly 
and to see things as they are, we shall easily per- 

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ceive that our true work lies here, and not ten 
thousand miles away. We are the foremost bear- 
ers of the most precious treasures of the race : in 
the success of the experiment which we are mak- 
ing the hopes of all noble and generous souls for 
a higher life of mankind are centred. If we fail, 
the world fails ; if we succeed, we shall do more 
io- the good of all men than if we conquered all 
the islands and continents. Our mission is to 
show that popular government on a vast scale is 
compatible with the best culture, the purest re- 
ligion, the highest justice, and that it can per- 
manently endure. In comparison with this what 
would be a thousand groups of Philippines? — 
what the most brilliant career of imperial pomp 
and glory ? 

[The policy commended by Bishop Spalding is in brief 
that we establish republics in Cuba and the Phillipines 
instead of making them subject colonies, and that we 
ourselves continue a republic faithful to the Declaration 
of Independence instead of becoming an Empire and 
championing the claims of George III.] 



For copies, address the Anti-Imperialist League of 
New York, 150 Nassau St., Room 1520, or P. O. Box iiii, 
New York City. 

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